Countdown To Championship Saturday: Hightower

The Hightower High School football program fielded its first varsity team in 2000, but in just nine seasons, the school has graduated some great players -- two have played in the NFL -- and made the playoffs seven times.

This year, however, is the first time the team has advanced to the state championship game, and the first time a Fort Bend ISD team has made it this far since 1991. Still, outside of the high school, finding a central community of fans going nuts about the team is tough.

"When you get out in suburban areas, with as many schools as we're building out here, they kind of lose their identity a little bit," Terry Priest, the assistant athletic director in Fort Bend, tells Hair Balls.

There's plenty of piling on the Hightower bandwagon, however, according to Priest. "I run into people at basketball games, and they may live in Sugar Land or out in Richmond, from Austin or Travis or Bush [high schools], and a lot of people are supporting Hightower," he says. "I wouldn't call it a football school, but they're very good in athletics."

Hair Balls hasn't heard of anything big planned for the team before the game, except a pep rally scheduled for Friday afternoon at the high school. Hightower's championship game against Allen, a Dallas suburb, starts at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Reliant Stadium.